Don't Torture a Duckling: Lucio Fulci

Lucio Fulci's horror films were never designed for the faint of heart.  Here, in Don't Torture a Duckling, he tests the limits of the audience by focusing on one of the most heinous crimes imaginable: child murder.  In a small village in the south of Italy, there have been a string of incidents where young boys have been found murdered.  The entire village is up in arms.  Frantic whispers start to insinuate a local black magician who lives on a hill and his devious female assistant.  But ultimately it's a red herring.  The real murderer, revealed in the last five minutes, is so eye-rollingly stupid that it kills the entire movie.  Not that this was a great movie to begin with.  The more and more films by Fulci I watch, the more convinced I become that he was a sub-par director who is held in high esteem because he knew how to put gore onscreen like it was nobody's business.  This murder mystery at its core is bizarrely bereft of tension and drama.  And unfortunately, the gore isn't up to par with Fulci's other macabre works like The Beyond and Zombie 2.  Still, it isn't frustratingly opaque and confusing like The Beyond.  It could have been worse.

6/10